voice of america during the 1950s

I was surprised to come across this earlier today. There are a few other documents looking at the way that the Voice of America network was involved in the McCarthy hearings. Most of the story surrounds the use of a US novelist by the name of Howard Fast who worked for one or another arm of the government's propaganda services. Evidently, the VOA was using some of his writings in their broadcasts precisely because he was a "leftist." In another article a few days earlier, the idea was more fully elaborated in the context of a State Dept memo:

At issue today was a State Department memorandum that apparently had been accepted as instructions to Voice of America officials regarding material to be used in broadcasts. The part that caught the subcommittee attention said:
"The reputation of an author affects the active utility of the material. If he is widely and favorably known abroad as a champion of democratic causes, his creditability and utility may be enhanced."
Similarly, if - like Howard Fast - he is known as a Soviet-endorsed author, materials favorable to the United States in some of his works may thereby be given a special creditability among selected key audiences."
Senator McCarthy brought out that, apparently as soon as Secretary Dulles had learned of this phase of the memorandum, the Secretary ordered its immediate cancellation

There are a couple of important aspects to this story for me. First, is the rather insane purgation that this was signalling at the time, such as the testimony of "W. Bradley Connors, identified as the top man in Voice of America operations policy, told the subcommittee today that he was acting immediately to sweep the organization's libraries clear of writings by leftists."

I knew that the anti-communist campaign was virulent, but I really thought that one had to actually be a member of the Communist Party of America to get blacklisted. But to simply say that anyone who was a "leftist" should be purged, that is really rather extreme.

Also, I am struck by the fact that this new call to make sure that there was a significant anti-communist messages were inserted into the programming in Latin America. This from the first article:

Earlier the subcommittee went into Voice of America broadcasts in Latin America. Stuart Ayers, acting chief of that division, testified that he "suspected but could not prove" that certain key men in the program had "deliberately" attempted to lessen the effect of anti-Communist propaganda in the programs broadcast there. He previously had named the suspects to the subcommittee, but the names were kept secret.
From Mr. Ayers' testimony it appeared that most of the Latin-American budget was spent on "juvenile" programs of the Superman variety. Tough anti-Communist propaganda was missing from the scripts, despite promises of its insertion, he said.

The accusation is that people were using something to soften up the hardline anti-communism of these earlier messages. Or, as McCarthy says in another article, "there are some people in the Voice of America who are doing a rather effective job of sabotaging Dulles and Eisenhower's foreign policy program." This is really relevant in the year or so before the VOA was used specifically as a disinformation and propaganda platform for the CIA assisted (if not sponsored and carried out) overthrow of the Arbenz government in guatemala. These articles appeared in the NYT in Feb 19, 20, and 14 respectively on pages 1, 9 and 1 also respectively.